Chapter Fourteen

Shann

“How is he, Doctor?”

Bogdanovic looks up at me as I enter his room. Behind him, there’s a sealed chamber on one of the beds. Our new guest, rescued from the Hercules, is inside. “Unconscious and staying that way for the time being,” Bogdanovic says. “I know you have questions for him, but he was hypoxic and suffering from carbon dioxide poisoning. While he’s out, I can regulate his breathing and gradually bring down the inflammation of his lungs.”

“How long?”

“An hour or two, minimum.” Bogdanovic holds up a hand. “I know the risk to us. I’m aware of what’s going on here. If I push the timetable up any further than that, you’ll get no information from him at all.”

I sigh. “It is what it is,” I say. “What other casualties have you had?”

“Two gunshot wounds and an assortment of cuts, bumps and bruises; plus Travers has a bad concussion. Tell that crazy Frenchwoman she needs to drive more carefully, next time.”

I smile. “I might have been piloting for some of all that.”

“Good of you to admit it. Same advice to you then,” Bogdanovic grunts.

There’s a silence between us. The doctor is busying himself, but I sense he’s waiting for me to leave. “I wanted to ask how things were for you, during it all.”

“No, you wanted to ask me if I saw anything suspicious.” Bogdanovic is looking me in the eye. It’s an intense stare. I return it evenly, determined not to flinch. “I think you need to be careful, Captain. You’ve asked the major to handle the investigation. Best you don’t go around doing her job.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

“Might be worth you seeing it from the other side then?” Bogdanovic suggests. “Let her do her job.”

More silence, more stares. “Okay,” I say at last.

* * *

When I get back, the bridge is quiet. Jacobson has returned. Duggins has left.

“Situation update, please, Lieutenant Commander Keiyho,” I say.

Keiyho swivels his chair toward me as I move to my seat. “Power-down time expired, so we began the start-up sequence as you ordered. Systems are coming back online. No sign of detection or further hostility.”

“Do you have a solution to the transmitter problem?”

“We do.” Keiyho nods toward Johansson. She looks like she’s recovered from her moment of crisis. Having a manageable task to solve may have helped.

“We’re adapting a drone,” she tells me. “It’ll be piloted, fitted with a signal detection unit, a cutter and some explosives. Duggins has gone to finalise it for launch.”

I glance toward the view screen. The cargo containers of the freight blot out almost everything. “Will the drone give us eyes on the other side of the Hercules?”

“Yes, they should. We’ve added a portable sweeper. It won’t have as much range as the Khidr’s laser scanner, but it’ll mean we have some warning if another ship gets close.”

“We’ll need that,” I say.

“Captain, they may just stay out there,” Jacobson says. “They think we’re dead, and we don’t know who or what they are. Why risk coming back?”

“Because I think they want something from the freighter,” I explain. “I think that’s why they left people on board. The distress signal disturbed them before they could find what they were looking for, so they abandoned a team and set up an ambush for us.”

“If they stay at range and keep an eye on things, eventually they’ll figure out we survived,” Keiyho says.

“They won’t do that,” I reply. “They’re on the clock, just like we are. They were coming in behind the missiles when we last got a reading. They won’t have changed course.”

“If they do come in, should we try to talk to them?” Jacobson asks. “Perhaps they’ll be reasonable?”

I shake my head. “They’ve committed a hostile act in what they did to the Hercules. They launched missiles at us. We have a tactical advantage, and I’m not giving it away in the hope they’ll want to talk.”

The comms bead in my ear crackles. “Duggins to Captain Shann.”

“Go ahead.”

“You get briefed by Johansson on the drone plan?”

“Yes, we’re chatting about it now.”

“Okay, we’re ready to deploy down here. Am I cleared to go ahead?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Great.”

I glance at Jacobson. “Now we’ve got power, have you run an analysis on the freighter’s position?”

Jacobson looks confused. “No, should I—”

“Yes, you absolutely should, Ensign. We need to know if there’s been any change. Could be a sign of a missile impact. We’re so close to the cargo section we won’t get much warning if things start drifting toward us.”

“Right, I’ll do that.” He turns away.

“See that you do.”

Johansson is focused on her screen, no doubt waiting for information from the drone. Keiyho is still looking at me.

“Captain, we need to plan some warfare scenarios,” he says.

“Agreed. What are your initial thoughts?”

“I think we assume we’re going to be fighting a human controlled and constructed ship,” Keiyho says. “Otherwise, we’ll have nothing to base our tactics on.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” I say. “But we adapt, if we find out we’re wrong.”

“If we assume the ship is Earth made, it makes sense that most of its capabilities will be similar to ours,” Keiyho says. “We know they have better long-range weaponry, but we think the technology used on those missiles is the sort of thing we could readily manufacture. That means it’s unlikely they have other advantages in acceleration, power distribution, or maneuverability.”

“So, at short range, the odds will be even.”

“More or less.”

Keiyho pushes a tactical representation of our position over to my screen. “If we obtain tracking data from the drone that enables us to determine the position of our enemy, we can maneuver out from behind the freighter and fire every weapon we have that’s in range. The drone and the ship will be able to maintain a target lock, in a similar way to how we deal with rogue asteroids. We need to hit as hard as we can and as fast as we can.”

I look at the calculations and numbers. The plan is simple. The best ones are. “What happens after that?” I ask.

“We close in,” Keiyho says, “and pound them with everything we have.”

“That’ll mean they’ll be able to do the same,” I say.

Keiyho smiles and there’s a glint in his eye. “Yes, just like some sort of seventeenth-century naval battle. It’s dangerous, but if we don’t hit hard and fast while we have the element of surprise, they’ll grind us to dust.”

“If their oxygen tanks rupture, or something else ignites, we could get caught in the debris.”

“It’s a risk, but in any engagement at range, we’ll lose.”

“Yes, I see your point.” I tap the screen with my finger. “What other scenarios have you prepared for?”

Keiyho shrugs. “Mostly reactive situations. If they find out we’re alive before they get close, we’ll need to hug the freighter and try to get behind them to target their engines.”

“They won’t destroy the freighter to destroy us,” I say.

“Yes, I agree with you on that.”

I’m thinking out loud, sharing my ideas as they come. “One thing we need to prepare is some communication updates. If we go down, we need to ensure Fleet and Earth know exactly what’s happened out here.”

“We could use one of the buoy satellites we have on board for that,” Keiyho suggests. “They’re preprogrammed with homing coordinates for Earth and Phobos Station. If we launch them as we go in, they’re less likely to be detected.”

“That would work,” I say. “Can we prepare them in time?”

Keiyho shrugs. “Currently, we don’t know how much time we have.”

“That’s something we can work on.” I turn my chair. “Jacobson, when you’re done with the freighter position, run a projection on the large object we identified in the laser sweep. I want to know its ETA.”

“Already done, Captain. It’ll arrive in just under thirty minutes.”

I nod to Keiyho. “That’s how much time we have. They’ll have to factor in some deceleration, but it won’t make a lot of difference. We need to be weapons ready by then.”

“I’ll need to talk to the crew,” Keiyho says. “I may need to pull a few people off other duties.”

“Do what you have to do,” I reply. “But don’t compromise our security.”

“You mean the traitor?”

“I mean the investigation. No one’s proven guilty, yet.”

Keiyho starts to make his way out. I see a new window flash up on Johansson’s screen a moment before she announces, “Drone online, Captain.”

I key up the same window on my own monitor. There’s a wide expanse of black; the freighter is positioned on the left. The drone rotates, then descends. The Hercules disappears from view.

“Moving us to the far side,” Johansson says. “No transmission signals detected so far.”

Dark shapes appear. The drone’s headlights illuminate them. They’re fragments of twisted metal, spinning in random directions. “That’s debris,” I say.

“Yes, and it’s small and light, which suggests the missiles took out our decoys,” Johansson replies.

“Can confirm freighter trajectory has altered zero point five metres,” Jacobson says. “That’s consistent with proximity to the explosions, but no impact.”

“Best-case scenario for us then.”

“At the moment, Captain, yes.”

A thought occurs to me. I open a comms channel to Duggins from my screen. “Commander, is the data connection to the airlock terminal on the Hercules still open?” I ask him.

“It was last time I checked,” Duggins says. He’s replying from his desk, and I see him glance briefly at a portable unit. “Yes, it’s still going. The transfer will be complete in just over two hours.”

“What’s the range on our connection?” I ask.

“Not massive. It’s a standard point-to-point stream. I optimised it to about one hundred and forty per cent of its specified range. I guess just over one and a half kilometres.”

“We may need to maneuver past that,” I warn.

“Well, both units are set up to auto-pause and resume if we do,” Duggins says. “The partial transfer will also be useful, if we don’t get everything.”

“Okay, thank you.” I end the connection. Throughout the conversation, I’ve had half an eye on the progress of the drone. Johansson’s picked up a larger object on its scanner and rotates the little craft so we can see it.

I recognise it immediately.

“That’s a missile…the one that didn’t explode.”

Since their development in the 1940s, missiles have always been sleek, oblong projectiles. The warhead and guidance is packed into the nose, the engine and fuel crammed into the end. There’s a tradition of making these projectiles sleek and aerodynamic. None of that matters in space, but old habits die hard. What we’re looking at could have graced the pages of a history book.

I think back to my conversation with Keiyho. “We can confirm they’re human,” I say.

Keiyho flashes me a tense grin. “Looks like it,” he says.

“Captain, I’m still reading telemetry from the warhead,” Johansson says. “It could still be live and reacquire us with its near-field detector when we emerge from behind the freighter.”

“Can we disable it?” I ask.

“If we do, we’ll lose the drone,” Johansson says. “We can’t move far enough away and destroy the missile.”

“You mentioned it’s still sending out a signal,” Keiyho says. “Can we hack that signal? Turn it into a weapon we can use?”

Johansson bites her lip. “I think I could do it, but not in thirty minutes.”

“Why would it stop?” I ask. “All six missiles were travelling at high speed; this one decelerated.” I tap on the screen. “There’s no sign of a braking thruster, so whatever stopped it must have been a freak impact.”

“Like it’s got a concussion,” says a voice from behind me. I turn around. Travers is in the doorway. He’s blinking a lot, trying to focus. “Lieutenant Bill Travers returning to duty, Captain.”

“Did Bogdanovic clear you, Lieutenant?”

“We had an argument. I came here. You need me.”

He’s right, we do need him. Without Le Garre, we’re short on pilots, and she’s busy interviewing Arkov. “Take the chair, Lieutenant,” I say.

“Thank you, Captain.”

I catch Keiyho’s eye and we both nod. We need to watch Travers. He’s clearly not at his best, none of us is, but he has more reason. “We need to decide what we’re doing about the missile,” I say. “Options?”

“Disabling the thruster with the cutter might be something we can do,” Keiyho says. “However, we can’t grab it or stop its rotation. It may be a waste of our time.”

“We could target it with the ship’s laser the moment we have a point-to-point solution?” Jacobson suggests.

“Or we leave it,” Johansson says. “If it was dangerous, it would correct that spin.”

“Option two and option three,” I decide. “Flag the location and update our tactical display.”

“Aye, aye.” Johansson flicks the controls, and the drone spins away from the missile. The Hercules reappears in our view.

“Estimated time to second ship arrival?” I ask.

“Twenty-four minutes, Captain.”

The battered metal side of the freighter’s containers is illuminated by the drone’s searchlights. Here and there I can see dents and scarring. “Must be peripheral blast damage,” I muse out loud.

“Looks like it,” Johansson agrees. “I’m moving us closer so we’ve less danger of being picked up in a scan. Once we’re positioned, I’ll turn around and then we can wait for the other ship.”

As if on cue, the proximity indicator flashes and Johansson flips the drone around. We’re staring out into the black now. A new window opens with a display of the little machine’s near-field scanner. The laser that the drone can emit is small and lower powered. We’ll get poor resolution from it compared to the Khidr’s sweeper, but any advantage we can get…

A thought occurs to me. I open another private comms channel to Duggins. He picks up quickly, still sitting at his desk. “Yes, Captain?”

“Your terminal access on the Hercules. Is it locked down, or can you still issue commands?”

“I can issue commands, but it’ll be slow going as the computer’s copying its whole database to us. What’s the need?”

“Could we power up the freighter’s scanner for a single sweep?”

Duggins chews his lip. “Possibly, if it’s still functional. The system is isolated; however it will drain the portable power unit we installed. Also, any ship approaching will notice.”

“They might think it’s a signal from their own people.”

“True.”

“How quickly could you get it done?”

“I can start it now.”

“Do that. We need the eyes.”

“Okay.”

I close the channel.

“Any sign of transmission from the Hercules?” Keiyho asks Johansson.

“None so far,” she says. “If they’ve spotted us and got comms, they’re leaving it late.”

“I’ve authorised Duggins to try to patch into the freighter’s scanner,” I tell them. “Discount that from your readings, Ensign.”

Johansson raises her eyebrows in surprise, but nods. “Will do, Captain.”

An orange dot appears on the drone’s camera view. It’s tracked from a similar dot on the scan. “Possible object identified,” Johansson says. “It’s close by and moving at the requisite velocity.”

“Send the data to Duggins,” I order. “If we can narrow the field, he can target the Hercules’s system to match and preserve some power in the portable generator.”

“As ordered,” Johansson answers. “I’m also targeting our second sweep.”

The orange signal moves forward as the screen updates the top right corner. The computer gives me an analysis of the object’s velocity. “They’re at one hundred and forty kilometres per hour. I guess they’re decelerating on approach.”

“At least that means they’ll hold still while we shoot at them,” Jacobson mutters.

“No excuses if we miss,” I say.

A third update of the screen, this time narrowing into a thin wedge around the orange dot. Again, it jumps forward. “One hundred and thirty-five klicks,” Johansson announces.

“Time to arrival?”

“Twenty minutes, Captain.”

“That has to be them,” Keiyho says. “I’m comparing with our earlier scans. It matches all of our previous data.”

“Agreed,” I reply. “Adjust our position and sound action stations to the crew. Let’s be ready. This time we start the fight, and we finish it.”